The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

So we were out in Brooklyn checking out an apartment (fabulous building, but the apartment was smallish and weirdly laid out) and decided if we are thinking of living there, we should eat there as well. We decided on sushi, though I had my reservations as I am the ultimate sushi snob. Good isn’t ok for me, I want the best or give me something else. I will admit, not the best attitude to go into dinner with.

The restaurant was very crowded and hot, so when they offered us an table in the back garden, we jumped at it. It was very nice in the garden, we had the place to ourselves, until it started to rain, and we were forced back inside. The design impressed me in that it was going for lofty goals, but interpreted them well on a low budget- instead of birch trees going into the ceiling (a la Nobu) , there were big pieces of bamboo going into the ceiling, and a fair amount of exposed brick wall. The lighting was a good idea, a sail like pieces of glass or paper (not sure) are suspended and lit from above. And the charger/platemats were simply circular pieces of sheet metal that worked very well against the black table clothes.

I got a combination plate and edamame. Alex got the sashimi platter. The edamame was very tasty, fresh tasting, not slimy, and well salted, but a huge portion. . (Edamame has to be the one vegetable my CSA has made me appreciate buying prepared in a store, picking them of the branches and defuzzing them is very labor intensive.). When dinner showed up, the huge theme was repeated - it was 2 rolls, 4 pieces of sushi and 9 pieces of sashimi, and gigantic portions.

One roll was tempura shrimp with eel, cream cheese and asparagus wrapped in cucumber. Some fancy rolls have so many flavors, or flavors that just don’t work together, that for all the each part of the roll might be good and fresh, the roll as a whole is not tasty. These flavors went well together, I would even say became more then the sum of their parts as I am generally not a eel fan at all. It also helped I could actually fit a piece in my mouth. The other roll was a spicy tuna topped with avocado. Tasty, though not so spicy at all. And too big to really be able to taste.

Sashimi I had 3 pieces each of salmon, toro and striped bass. The first thing I would have to say is the pieces were far to big - not like 2 bite big, like 3+ bite big. And cold, not room temperature, but straight out of the fridge cold. The toro was visibly the most marbled I have ever seen, you could really see how fatty it was. And after I started putting it on Alex’s bowl of steaming rice to warm the pieces up, it was good. But there was actually too much. The pieces of salmon were even bigger, and not terribly good - the flavor was fine and not fishy, but the texture was very leather-y. I actually wonder if it was in fact smoked salmon, not fresh as Alex’s salmon was quite good, fresh in both taste and texture. But there was no smoked or cured flavor to mine, just the texture. Odd. The stripped bass as fine, but also suffered from being too cold, I couldn’t really taste anything about it.

The sushi - I believe they were a piece of yellowtail, mackrel, fluke and I am not sure of the last, another white fleshed fish. Pretty much too big and too cold sum them up. Not bad per se. Its hard to taste anything though when you have to bite a piece of sushi in two, and still its hard to chew.

I think this is the first time I have left sushi behind, not because it was bad, but because there was simply too much for me to eat. And as anyone who has seen me eat an omakase knows, I can eat a whole lotta sushi. I would come back I think, if we end up in the neighborhood, and either bring a knife, or ask for one so I can cut the portions down. Or I would do what I saw another women do. She ordered one roll only, and instead of even attempting to eat the pieces whole, sort of mashed them up and ate it all separately.

B-